Nothing makes Filipino expats long for the old country better than Christmas time. I wrote this blog a few years ago and as Christmas nears, the longing for my birth country comes once more.
A Whimsical Song
The drive across
the Golden Gate Bridge from the San Francisco end to Mill Valley never gets old
with me. I have not seen many pictures
more beautiful than this three-minute drive across the world-famous bridge. This particular morning, as my usual schedule,
I was on the bridge shortly after 6 am.
There was hardly any traffic. The
sun had risen on the eastern sky, glistening on the bay, but midspan, a layer
of fog hung slightly above the bridge and rays of sunshine pushed their way
through it turning the bridge to a magical golden color. Feasting on this beauty I reached down to the
CD controls on my car’s dashboard, pushed button #5 and was greeted by an old,
familiar song from my youth.
“Sa
twing madaling araw, kok-kok-koro-rok-kok-kok
Ang aming puting Texas, malakas
tumilaok.
At nang nagdaang linggo ay may pista ng bayan
At sa sabungan dito, malaki ang pustahan.”
Strangely, I heard myself singing
with Sylvia Latorre, and even more strangely, I still remembered every word of
the song. As I came to the Marin County
end of the bridge and easing onto the land traffic in between the hills and
down Interstate 101, I felt tears streaming down my cheeks. How could Sylvia’s song do this?
It has been over
40 years since I left my country of birth.
The years have swiftly flown and my life has taken turns and detours
that I have never dreamt of. I have been
so very busy making a life for myself in this adopted country. Don came into my life, we got married in 1974
and together we have raised a family, been in pastoral ministry in the Bay Area
and Christian foreign mission in Indonesia, moved about in the US, worked in
various companies and City government.
In the early years away from the Philippines, I tried to stay connected
with friends there. As I became
aculturized to things American, I found myself torn between the culture I was
born in and all that I have held dear, and falling in love with my adopted
country. It had not been easy. There was pain as I hung on to my old
ways. The memory of friends and kin,
joys of childhood, the security of being in my country of birth, amongst people
whom I knew and who knew me, gnawed at me. And yet, before me is this generous,
beneficent country that so graciously took my family and me in as we searched
for a better way of life. I was
beginning to fall in love with her but what do I do with my old love? Is it possible to be loyal and faithful to
both?
December 1969, First American Christmas
Experiencing my first Christmas in the US, I
stood at the corner of Market and Powell in front of the big building famously
known as Woolworth’s, taking in all the trappings of the season that stores and
shops gaudily adorned themselves in pursuit of the Almighty Christmas dollars.
Shoppers, in sweaters, wool coats and scarves scampering about with their
bundles and boxes, fought the cold, the jampacked sidewalks, and traffic jams
that would not quit. Perfect Currier & Ives scene. As a young girl in the Philippines, I would
have given my eyeteeth to be part of this, but as I took in the scene before me
I felt intense sadness. My eyes started
to tear up. How could I be sad in the
midst of such excitement?
And here many
years later Sylvia Latorre’s whimsical song about cockfights, which I have not
heard in more than 40 years, made me cry.
The amygdala in my little pea brain was responding to some stimulus long
suppressed – the memory of the country of my childhood. Once again the balmy
December breeze in the faraway little Philippines city where I was born and
raised was caressing my face. I could
hear the lilting Christmas sounds of Ang
Pasko ay Sumapit, the smells coming from little stands offering tea, coffee
and puto bumbung during the early
morning masses of the Roman Catholic and Aglipayan churches in Cavite City
beckoned me. The remembrance of playful
sounds of little Cumbancheros trying
to squeeze out Christmas carols from the little gas cans, bamboo maracas and tiny harmonicas harked back
to Christmases of long ago. Through the
tears I could see in my mind’s eye the brightly lit star lanterns hanging from windows. And once again I was a little Filipino girl,
with my Filipino friends, in my Filipino home.
As I drove north
on 101, Sylvia’s song about cockfights, memories of town fiesta’s and childhood
friends, the little elementary school I went to, the high school which still
stands, came rushing back, pushing out thoughts of the moment.
"You Can Take the Girl Out of the Country, But . . . "
The old cliché “You can take the girl out of the
country, but not the country out of the girl” rings true. Forty-one years in the United States, much
longer than I have lived in my birth country, but the notes of one little
whimsical song transported me back instantly to my home of so long ago. In the mid-seventies Don and I lived in
Indonesia for almost four years. In that
period of time I hardly spoke Tagalog because I knew no other Filipino in my
area other than one woman whom I didn’t see much of, anyway. But coming home to my relatives in New York
City, I spoke the language perfectly despite my lack of practice. It has amazed me how fellow Filipino
expatriates often inquire of each other, “When was the last time you were
home?” referring to the Philippines.
When we talk of visiting the Philippines, we often talk of these visits
as “going home” regardless of how long it had been since we left. My father joined the US Navy when he was 13
(at that time it was easy to falsify one’s age, he signed up as a 16-year old),
spent 33 years traveling all over the world with the US Navy, and spent more
time in the U.S. than in the country of his birth. Upon his retirement, he chose to go home to
the Philippines. He wanted to die and be buried there. Like a homing pigeon, he went back to his
birth country.
For whatever
reason we have left the country, a great majority of us get a longing to go
back, back to where we first saw the light of day, back to where we were raised
with all the pleasant memories of childhood. But more significantly, we long to
be back in our country of birth where there was never any question as to our
identity. We knew who we were and as the guys in TV's "Cheers" sing, "Everybody knows your name."
For years I have
dealt with the problem of being torn between my birth country and my adopted
country by straddling the two cultures, melding that which were good from the
two into a third culture all my own. But the memories of who I was as a young
person intrude into my consciousness every so often, triggering the longing for
what I used to call home.
